By Tony Afejuku

In life we have different dreams. Subject to the will and wheel of destiny, some or many persons will or may have their hopes and dreams fulfilled. Others are not, may not or will not be so lucky.

When my creative or journalistic imagination was not responding to my nudging it to speak to me as I was, to be sure, readying the column for our audience, I decided to poke, through something of the omniscient authorial voice characteristic of the gleaner-glimpser-glitterer, an outstandingly regular reader of this page to converse with me. The conversation centred on issues that have appeared here in the recent past – whose every odour was not, is not, of stale spices – and new ones of vital ingredients of both form and substance. Clearly, the reader – whose identity shall be disclosed shortly, has illuminating ideas and he can be a very good lover of jokes.

Gleaner: As an academic and writer, may I begin this conversation by asking you if you are aware of the recent scholarly news from King’s College, London where lecturers are being told, ordered, to “ignore students’ poor grammar in diversity and inclusion drive?” King’s College, London is a top grade British University that has insisted or, better, that is insisting, that lecturers should “ignore their students’ poor grammar in order to embrace linguistic diversity”. It also “plans to scale back traditional exams in an effort” to be more “inclusive”. What is the implication of this for overseas students, including Nigerian students studying there? And, specifically, what implication will this have for our country in future?

Reader: This is not applicable here in Nigeria and in Africa as a whole. It would mean nothing, but the end to the use of English. King’s College, London has mistaken inclusivity for revenue generation strategy. The population of black students in the College will fall in the future. Only northern fallouts popularly known as “namu, namu” in Nigeria will be admitted there, and that means a drop in academic standards at King’s College. This is my honest impression after reading the strange story.

Gleaner: This is well said. Let me shift the conversation to my discourse on Professor Sophia Ogwude’s recent book which Aboki Press, Makurdi published. Shall I say – I mean should I say – that your tragic response to it convincingly marks you, even in its brevity, as a poet and critic of substance, Professor Owojecho Omoha?

Reader: Really? Maybe, no, not maybe, I should re-create it. I paddled the flowing discourse on the Nigerian socio-political space in prose fiction with elaborate thoughts on your offering. When I got to the narrow passage or the strait, the line “shamelessly thieving scoundrel thieving like the thieving scoundrel our country is” blocked my mind.

The strait is part of Sophia Ogwude’s discourse, recalling why T.A.’s thieving sounds so familiarly familiar like the Strait of Hormuz. Down there, at Hormuz, warfare is fast becoming too scientific to be fiction. What makes Sophia Ogwude’s criticism of Nigeria’s socio-political space fiction “discourse for all seasons”, as Robert Bolt would say, is the science of thieving in the Nigerian novel. Thieving belittles our leadership beyond fiction, Sophia Ogwude resounds: From Wole Soyinnka to Chinua Achebe, and, from Chimamanda Adichie to the present day Nigerian novelist, imagination is flaunted as ballistic missile to open the Strait of Thieving for all Nigerians to pass!

Gleaner: This is strangely, but very adroitly, put. You are a critic of illuminating humour. Prof. Sophia Ogwude is from your university – University of Abuja (now Yakubu Gowon University). Will she love and admire the beauty of your humour relating to the human values of the truth of her discourse?

Reader: Professor Sophia Ogwude is, was, my very senior colleague and friend. She definitely won’t misunderstand me and blacklist me for my positive insight into her discourse, a highly and visibly positive insight into her discourse which you coloured, critiqued, with distinction. I am sure she will appreciate you. Has she met you in person, or has the very brilliant TA, the gleaner-glimpser-glitterer met her in person? She is equally a radiant scholar.

Gleaner: Professor Owojecho Omoha, our audience will want to know you more. Can you dissect or exhibit yourself honestly for them to have more than a fleeting glimpse of you?

Reader: If you insist, I will…

Gleaner: I insist!

Reader: Hmmmm! My dream was to be a journalist. And destiny was kind to me. My love was radio journalism. I meant and dreamed to carve an unforgettable, a lasting, image of it. I was in Makurdi as a radio journalist in Radio Benue owned by the Benue State Government. At moments when I was thriving or when I thought I was thriving as a radio journalist, God in His Infinite Wisdom pulled me out of journalism – twenty-six years ago when I was the Secretary of the Benue State Council of the Nigerian Union of Journalists. As a journalist, I was also into creative writing.

When I left journalism, let me spare you and your readers, my fellow readers of your column of spices of spices, where something new, something highly intentive and original, something originally original, to borrow your linguistic mannerism, always delightfully appears, the details that got me out – I went into academics. Indeed, when I left journalism for academia after twenty-six years of practice, I thought that the academia was better off or would be better off. I got into the classroom to be shocked.

To be continued.

Afejuku can be reached via 08055213059.